THE CENTENARY OF KAFKA

Abstract

1. Preamble: First Grief Two years before his death, Kafka sent the very short story "First Grief"?"Erstes Leid"?to the editor of a German periodical, Genius. It related a trapeze-artist's striving for perfection in performance of an aerial act and distancing himself from humanity by the needs of this act. The accompanying letter which was discovered in 1983 assessed the story in self-deprecating tones. Kafka called it "wretched stuff"?"j?mmerliches Zeug"?and implored the editor to destroy it if it should not meet with his full approval.1 In the same year he wrote to his closest friend Max Brod that his own valuative judgment on his work has two aspects: truth and method. By truth he meant the factual occurrences; by method he meant the explication and the interpretation of the factual occurrences. The method, as he conceived it, was a masterpiece of irony, a sort of self-trickery, superior to truth: or-supertruth. It lent a new dimension to the decision of Max Brod, his friend, not to destroy the manuscripts of Kafka who probably did not wish them to be destroyed, and who expected that his friend would not carry out his wishes. Brod's decision rescued a major writer from total oblivion.